ALWAYS EXPERIMENTING

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a musician in possession of a brilliant album in 2019 must be in want of door sales and merch sales if he wants to also be in possession of an income.

“If I wait for random inspiration I achieve very little.”

Ed Kuepper

But even in these days of free music streaming and
non-existent CD players, the cult figure who is Ed Kuepper is able to usurp
this reality and still regularly sells considerable numbers of CDs and records
to his legions of committed fans – some who have followed him since his days in
Australian punk band The Saints, in the 1970s.

And this same diaspora of fans bought out every ticket to
several of the shows on his current tour at venues across the east coast

He plays in Perth at Freo.Social next week and west-coast fans can expect to hear some of what they recognise – but with new sounds, new expressions. When I spoke to Kuepper this week over the phone, he was just starting to record a new album and couldn’t pin down what Perth fans could expect to hear from the live show.

He said his last solo tour four years ago was all about
workshopping songs for the album he was then working on – Lost Cities – but this tour will not be the same.

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He is always experimenting with sounds and next week expects
to play both new and old songs.

“I’m currently recording my first solo album since Lost Cities in 2015 and I am still
unsure how the next album will sound,” he said.

“With the Unedited
Unhinged tour I’ll be taking different approaches to songs that people may
already know.

“It’s more the mastering or working out the style and aesthetic
of the songs,

“I like the idea of playing songs to people where they will
have some kind of connection, but I will be using different instruments.

“The audience will hear things that are evocative of what
they’ve heard before – it’s the tonality, the colours that I’m going to use
that will be different.”

Kuepper has a distinctive sound, but punters at next week’s show
can expect to hear a range of instruments that are new to him.

“There is an electric tenor guitar that Warren Ellis (from
the Bad Seeds) gave me – it’s completely different, with four strings, and it
is all much higher … a different sound. It is a sparser sound but also a full
sound,” he said.

“There is also a 12-string electric which I’ve never played
onstage before, and the way that I tune it gives it a fairly lush orchestral
sound.”

“It’s all a work in progress and I think people will be
taken with it.”

All but one show on this tour will be solo, but Kuepper often
plays with different arrangements of musicians.

“I like to chop it up a bit – I’ve never had an interest in
doing one thing and sticking to it.

“I must have a low attention span or I just get bored

“I think it is important to push yourself, even in a solo
environment.”

Kuepper said was always encouraging to learn his shows had
sold-out.

“You can never assume that will happen – I’ve been around
for a long time but I’ve never been a “chart” act, so to be sold out …I’m quite
grateful,” he said.

In the past Kuepper has performed requests from the
audience.

“The diversity of material that people ask for is
substantial and goes across decades – and that is really great. It’s heart-warming.”

When asked about the new album he is creating, Kuepper said
he couldn’t yet comment on what to expect.

“This will be radically different to The Aints album of
2017, The church of simultaneous
existence, which was a really good record,” he said.

“It is a work in progress at the moment – I just started
yesterday and its sounding very good – but where it goes needs some work.

“My most successful recordings, artistically, have a
particular ambience about them, an atmosphere about them.

“It’s really important to me that a whole album has that.”

Kuepper said that he doesn’t stream music and prefers to
listen to an album in its entirety, rather than listening to a random selection
of songs.

And don’t go to Spotify expecting to find his whole canon of
work – often he will create an album and only release it in hard copy to his
loyal subscribing fans.

Kuepper started his music career in the early 1970s playing
with the early punk band The Saints – which Nick Cave described as “god-like”,
and “anarchic and violent”.

Australian rock historian Ian McFarlane described The
Saints’ distinctive sound as being defined by Kuepper’s “frenetic, whirlwind guitar style”. Kuepper later
played with the Laughing Clowns before beginning a solo career in the
mid 1980s, and starting the band The Aints.

During the 1990s his musical output was prolific and saw his
albums enter the charts, bringing him wider acclaim and awards, and bringing
him to the attention of younger generations.

His song-writing fervour continues today – though he said he
found the song-writing experience variable.

“The only way for me to write is to allocate a few hours
every day, otherwise I’m not disciplined,” he said.

“I like the idea of getting up before sunrise and writing
for a few hours, but I don’t always do it. There is something quiet about it
which allows a kind of meditative concentration, and if I go into my studio and
start playing I get something out of it – though that varies all the time.